More Schubert

The stringed Schubert noticed at reference 1 was followed up a couple of days later by some keyed Schubert, D960, from one Ignas Maknickas, a young man just starting out on his career. So has not yet acquired a page on Wikipedia, but he does have the web site at reference 2, from which I learn he was born in California in 1998 and was raised in Lithuania, presumably the country of origin of at least one of his parents.

An overcast day, and after deep thought I decided to take the tube there, rather than cycle over from Waterloo, which is what I would have done not so many years ago.

So train to Vauxhall, where there were lots of cricket types milling about. Mainly male, middle aged and middle classed. Not a tinny to be seen anywhere; if present, all neatly tucked away into their neat little bags and rucksacks. Plus summery shirts and hats. While the tube was very hot, and seemed very hot indeed by the time that I got to Oxford Circus. I would not have cared to spend much time down there, let alone do any work.

An art work carved into the entrance of an office block in Regent Street, a lot better in real life than it appears above. See references 3 and 4.

The margins of Cavendish Square were looking a little unkempt. Not helped by some of their box trim being struck down in the same way as our own box back in Epsom.

A light lunch on a bench consisting of a thin slice of home-baked brown, without butter or cheese on this occasion. Maybe a mouth full of water. 

From there to the Wigmore Hall, perhaps a third to a half full. Same flowers as on the Sunday, starting to look a bit tired.

The stocking filler from Remesa was short and not without interest. with Remesa being a Lithuanian with a Wikipedia page in Lithuanian. While the Schubert had a slightly metallic sound to it and seemed very fast. Sometimes a bit of the background got a bit lost behind all the goings on in the foreground. All of which might have been the youth of the executant or might have been my lack of sleep the night before. But good all the same. And oddly, afterwards I felt much refreshed; the lack of sleep had been blown away.

There was also a short encore. Not terribly appropriate to my mind, but had the virtue of being very short.

As it happened, I was reminded a few days later that the performers like these stocking fillers; they provide a bit of welcome variety from the stuff the punters come to hear, stuff which they have probably played time after time. But they have the good sense not to include too much filler, which might put the paying punters off.

From there to Hinde Street to pull a Bullingdon to take me down to Old Compton Street, via Soho Square, to buy cheese. I had to cheat a bit to take a right off Oxford Street.

A litter of hire bikes somewhere along the way. I find them very irritating, but I imagine that I would be wasting my time if I were to write a moaning letter to the Mayor of London about them. More important things to worry about.

Cheese bought - Lincolnshire Poacher again - on to Drury Lane and from there down to Waterloo. On the roundabout a large black transit van with a passenger in army uniform. What were they up to? And just behind the stand snapped above we had four students practising their jumps around the top of the stairs. Two of each sex.

From there, a short visit to the Hole in the Wall, a house I used to use reasonably regularly once, before Youngs gathered it into their family. But I was pleased to find that it had not changed much and was still a slightly scruffy boozer.

The penultimate item was some full-on young people a few seats away from me on the train. Maybe they were wannabee creatives. A bit tiring for us pensioners.

While the outing wound up with the haul snapped above from the Raynes Park platform library. The ancient romance bottom right for BH was rapidly discarded. The thriller top right was noticed at reference 5. While left we have a rather odd cycling magazine, this number of which was devoted to lady cyclists. Lots of arty pictures of ladies, their cycles and parts of their cycles. Haven't really got to grips with it yet.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/death-and-maiden-not.html.

Reference 2: https://www.ignasmaknickas.com/.

Reference 3: Line - Vone Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier - 2014.

Reference 4: https://atopia.org.uk/commission/line/. The creatives - who, seemingly, have tapped into the corporate market for art.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/jack-finney.html.

Wasps?

This ivy seemed alive with wasps again around noon earlier today, warm with the sun out. But they don't seem to have survived the Samsung treatment, and I can only find five or six when I zoom in. Perhaps it is the lack of movement which makes them hard to pick out.

I say wasps, but BH, who was not there on this occasion, seems to think bees are more likely. I asked Bard but he was not particularly helpful although I did learn that:

'Bees are pollinators, and they rely on flowers for food. Ivy blooms in the late fall, when many other flowers have died back. Bees are attracted to ivy's nectar and pollen, and they play an important role in pollinating this plant.

Wasps are predators and scavengers. They eat other insects, spiders, and nectar. Wasps are attracted to ivy's nectar, but they are not as dependent on it as bees. Wasps are also more likely to be active in the heat of the day, while bees are more active in the morning and evening'.

Checking, I find a distinction between what wasps eat and what they feed their larvae, who can, it seems, deal with a wider variety of solid food than the adult. Something which Bard did not think to mention, although he did think that I was interested in wasp stings.

And then his logic seemed to fail on my follow-up.

All that said, my rather dim memory of getting for twelve hours ago, does not include the bright yellow and black striped abdomens with pointed ends that I associate with wasps. So my money is on bees - but not the bumble sort.

PS: mid-afternoon on Friday, that is to say the following day, we came across some more busy ivy, not far from junction 17 on the M4. And BH was quite clear on this occasion that it was bees.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/skinner.html. Previous notice.

A nearly new magazine

On a recent trip through Raynes Park, I picked up an unusual item, unusual in the sense that it was a serious journal, very nearly new. To wit, the September 2023 number of the Geographical Journal, Vol.189, No.3.

Nothing much like the November 1987 number, Vol.8, No.5 lifted from ebay and snapped above. By the look of it published by the RGS themselves and printed by one Edward Stanford, the chap who later had the fine map shop in Long Acre, now more or less deceased. 

The old shop is still there in Long Acre, I dare say a listed building, but it is now occupied by someone selling fashion clothes. Not completely clear, but probably for both men and women. While the passage to the right leads to the Lamb & Flag, a boozer once famous for both its clientèle and its bread and cheese, particularly its Stilton, but I dare say that it has moved on too.

The journal is now published by Wiley, whose name appears at the top of more or less every page. But I suppose it makes sense these days to contract the job out to a specialist. This number being pages 384 to 552, a bit more than 150 pages. Perhaps the original idea was to number the pages with the bound volume to come in mind. Taking the long view as it were. A bit of tradition which has survived.

The first fifty of those pages are given over to the Arctic, to its rising temperature and to the goings-on of the various players. That is to say the eight Arctic nations - Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States - plus others who want a finger in the pie, notably the UK and China. The latter seeming to be keen to project its great power status into this largely empty, but nevertheless important space. Not that one can blame them - great power projection being something that we in the UK have done for the last 200 and more years and we have not grown out of it yet.

And not having a territorial foothold, the Chinese make full use of their considerable space and maritime assets to collect a huge amount of data; data which they do not seem particularly keen to share, which is a pity.

Even more depressing, after a thirty year break, militarisation seems to be in full swing again, with all kinds of offensive and defensive assets being put in place there. Lots of dual use assets which can equally well serve military or civil ends.

As an aside, I am reminded that the Arctic is quite different from the Antarctic in that it has inhabited land all around it. Much easier to be relaxed about a chunk of ice hidden away in the depths of the southern ocean, hundreds of miles away from anywhere, never mind anywhere important.

On a lighter note, geographers seem to be very keen on using lots of arcane jargon, some warning of which is given by the titles they give their papers. For example: 'Moving through liquid territories: A cartographic history of roads in the Danube Delta'. Or from reference 1: 'Evaluation of efficiency of the index of potential anthropic geomorphology at meso level: a case study of Goa State, India'. Or: 'Experiences of dog theft and spatial practices of search/ing'. This last, at least, is open access.

A sense that, having thoroughly described and mapped the world, once the main business of geographers, they are now casting around for anything which admits a large scale spatial dimension. I am reminded of the Economic Atlas of Ontario, a copy of which was once in my possession, a beautifully and expensively produced book full of rather curious maps, mostly white space, but littered with circles of various sizes and colours indicating the presence of this or that activity. For example, lithium mining. Now, maybe twenty five years later, they have moved well beyond coloured circles!

A journal which I was interested to see, but which has now been retired.

References

Reference 1: https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14754959.

Perchance to dream

I woke up this morning thinking about the story which follows. A story which I think has cropped up in dreams from time to time over the years - but I don't know whether it has any foundation in truth. This morning's take is probably not.

For some small number of years I rented a ground floor flatlet, front left as you faced the house, in a terraced house, perhaps in west London, perhaps the sort of thing snapped this morning from gmaps, near Ladbroke Grove in west London. Then a rather more scruffy area than I imagine it is now. The landlady lived in the back somewhere and the rest of the house was rented out. The flatlet was more or less all in one, with a sitting area at the front and a small kitchen diner area at the back. Bed in the middle somewhere. Work table in the middle somewhere. Sink but no toilet or bath, so there must have been shared bathrooms. I used the place from time to time in my travelling days, perhaps when I was with CCTA, because it was cheaper and pleasanter than taking a hotel room by the night. I kept a modest amount of stuff there. BH visited occasionally, perhaps giving the place a bit of a dust. There was some complicated arrangement with the bank for paying the rent, an arrangement which came unstuck at one point and I had to scurry around to put things back together again. A tenancy eventually brought to an end, some time after it had stopped making much sense financially. I never did use the place very often.

There is another story that came to mind after I had woken up properly, another story which crops up in dreams from time to time, not recently, about a restaurant in Queensway which we used to visit when we were young. Near the Bayswater Road end, the same side of the road and quite near the ice skating place. A rather inconspicuous entrance from the street. A two tier place with a front portion more for coffee and cakes, then down some steps to a rather bigger back portion more for meals. There was a balustrade separating the two portions and stopping one falling over the edge. There was a piano just below the balustrade. A little on the dear side, a little grand for us at the time. But we liked it. Maybe some truth in this one?

No trace of any such place now, in StreetView, but it would have been near fifty years ago and there has been a lot of change in Queeensway in that time. As I had found on the occasion noticed last year at reference 1.

PS: it occurs to me now that the first story may be a derivative of the bedsit I rented in Balham for a few months, at the time of our move from Norwich to London some thirty years ago. Not a flatlet and not in the right part of London, but it answers in other respects.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/edgware-road.html.

Death and the maiden not

A week or so ago, I had thought that we were going to hear Schubert's D810 string quartet at one of the Wigmore Hall's Sunday morning concerts, given by the Doric String Quartet, whom we have heard occasionally in the past, for example just about two years ago, as noticed at reference 1. But not from the Simmenauer stable of reference 3.

Given that the Waterloo trains were not running, we were out of the house before 09:00, a bit strong for us these days.  But at least the weather had broken and it was no longer quite so hot.

A scruffy Sainsbury's trolley on Station Approach, which I never got back to in the days following. A ticket machine which did not understand about senior railcards - perhaps it was a few minutes before 09:30 - but on this occasion the ticket office was open and was able to do the business. Furthermore, the air conditioning on our Southern train worked well.

Spotted some very fetching beach wear at Victoria Station. Was the young lady returning from some festivity the evening before or was she just dressed to shop?

From the station a 390 bus to Selfridges, passing the decapitated horse and various other rather tiresome art works in Park Lane. And a collection of black tents at Marble Arch. We thought little of them at the time.

Then, instead of our usual All Bar One, we took breakfast in Silvio's of Duke Street. Croissant for him and coffee for her. All good, but the establishment was oddly scruffy around the edges - oddly for a place which seemed to be quite into style and décor.

Into the full Wigmore Hall to find that we were not on D810 at all, rather D887, the last of Schubert's string quartets, written in 1826 some two years before he died, but published posthumously 25 years later. Played with great verve by this relatively young quartet.

Out to the Caffe Caldesi, which it turns out we had not visited for getting on for four years. Quiet and comfortable this Sunday lunchtime, which suited us just fine. The rolling pins noticed at reference 6 were still there, not far from where we were seated.

They did a 2021 Greco di Tufo so we took that, something we were searching out a few years back. From the people at reference 7, where I think it says that this particular wine is not presently available. At least this bottle was and it did us very well.

Bread and olives to start. I thought they were being a bit mean with the bread, but then it turned out that the crisp bread was a complimentary offering and the proper bread followed on.

We both took calves liver. Good, if a little on the rare side for me. The yellow puddle went went with what was left of the bread. For the curious, a clove of garlic sat on top of the mashed potato. What was called Mediterraean vegetables upper left, a mixture of aubergines and courgettes, thinly sliced lengthwise then roasted or perhaps grilled. Courgettes good, not so sure about the aubergines - not a vegetable we make much - if any - use of at home.

Too full for a solid dessert, but BH did manage a coffee and I managed a grappa. I explained to the waitress that I did not do alcohol and caffeine at the same time, and quick as a flash she smiled beautifully and told me that Italian men did. In this case, the grappa was more liqueur, more sherry than the marc which, according to Simenon, was the sort of thing you got in working men's cafés in his day. Not the sort of thing that respectable people drank much at all.

Out to wonder whether, even in Marylebone, a shop carrying a display like that above could make a living. OK, so you are the go-to place for jam and mustard freaks but are there enough of them to pay the rent?

And this rather unusual building, quite nearby, was the next to catch our eye. Wondering about it, the increasingly intrusive Bing popped up and told me that: 'according to the UCL Survey of London, Sarsden Buildings was financed by Lady Ducie (1829–1895), whose London residence was in Portman Square, and named after her birthplace in Oxfordshire. The buildings were constructed after Lady Ducie acquired the freeholds of the houses on the site when these were put up for sale with other properties on the now fragmented Great Conduit Field estate in 1873'. He also pointed me to reference 8 - from which I learn that this now rather posh bit of London real estate was not at all posh in the middle of the 19th century. Quite unsavoury in fact.

Onto Oxford Street where we found ourselves on a 390 bus fast enough, but it ground to a halt just before we got to Marble Arch. Just behind this very serious looking recovery vehicle. It seems that the black tents we had seen earlier had morphed into a full-on manifestation, including marches in Park Lane, possibly a Shia celebration of the battle of Karbala, although the date did not seem quite right. Whatever the case, the bus was not going to move down Park Lane any time soon, so we opted to jump on the tube and go to Wimbledon. From where I thought there were trains to Epsom - their having appeared on the platform indicator boards at Epsom had confused me - while actually it was a bus replacement service. After two of these buses had been cancelled, I voted for the tram to Mitcham Junction - a new experience for us - where we just missed the connection to Epsom. And the next train here was cancelled too, so we had an hour to wait. All in all, a very long journey home. But at least there was a taxi at Epsom; a proper black cab with a light.

The wilding of Mitcham Junction.

At least at our age, sitting around on a warm afternoon is not the trial it might have been thirty years ago. In any case, varied, in my case, by taking a few turns up and down the rather long platform. 

And I did get some further consolation in the form of a genuine British Rail brick, now part of my collection back at Epsom. There was also a much larger block, or perhaps half block, but quite apart from not qualifying, it would have been a bit heavy to manage. I might have dropped it on my toes.

And there was this new-to-me train cover from Bankside. Serious people, with the suggestion at reference 10 that they once made cannon, perhaps before moving into drain covers. Once located at Gunwharf, Wapping. Lots of drawings of their cannon are to be found in the collections of the Royal Armouries - but if they have been digitised, whoever put them online was a bit careless.

However, they managed things rather better at the Army Museum of Tasmania, where they offer reference 11, from which the snap above is taken. The ship concerned, a barque, was built for the opium trade in 1854, although it never actually made it and had to settle for tea.

The last trophy of the day was this new-to-me washer, with bevelled edges. Why would one do such a thing?

PS: the next morning, Thursday: inspection of the archive reveals that we used to buy wine from the same stable at Ponti's, not far down the road in Great Castle Street, just behind Oxford Circus. But there, we used to go to for the Fiano di Avelino I Favati until it was delisted.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/11/end-of-october.html.

Reference 2: https://doricstringquartet.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/08/life-in-string-quartet.html.

Reference 4: https://www.silvios.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://www.caldesi.com/caldesi-in-marylebone/.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/beethoven-250.html.

Reference 7: https://www.cantineifavati.it/.

Reference 8: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/survey-of-london/2019/12/25/st-christophers-place/.

Reference 9: https://www.lanternrecovery.com/. Not very interested in providing arty shots of all their heavy recovery vehicles.

Reference 10: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Bailey,_Pegg_and_Co.

Reference 11: http://armymuseumtasmania.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/No-23-Smooth-Bore-6Pdr-Cannon.pdf.

Bus lanes

To wind up out stay in Orchard Park noticed at reference 1, we took a stroll along the part of the bus way to the north of the A14. According to gmaps the NCN51. And according to Bing 'NCN51 is a cycle route running across the South Midlands and East Anglia, from Oxford to Colchester via Cambridge and the Haven Ports. From Harwich to Colchester, the route forms part of the EuroVelo 2 Capitals Route and the EuroVelo 12 North Sea Circuit'. From which we deduce we have both a bus route and a cycle route - with the only remaining catch being that while the description of the cycle route provided does include Cambridge, it does not fit in other ways.

Approaching the A14, bottom right in the bit of map above. Quiet at the time of the snap, but the buses - looking pretty much like ordinary buses - were frequent enough and went along at a fair clip - and there were quite a few bicycles. Some of them looked to be commuters and some of them both had bells and used them, which was good.

There were a lot of these blue flowers in the verges and hedgerows to our right. Identified, rather to my surprise, by Google Images as chicory, Cichorium intybus. See reference 2. Which seems to agree well enough with what I can make of the entry in Bentham & Hooker.

And if the weather were to hold, there would be enough blackberries to pick in a few days. See reference 3 for the story at Epsom, about a week previous.

A curious bit of masonry in the middle of a field, which gmaps suggests might be a memorial stone to Elizabeth Woodcock. Given which clue, Bing reveals it to be a replica of a monument set up to commemorate a lady boozer, on the way back from Cambridge market one dark night, who fell off her horse, got snowed in and eventually died of complications. A lesson to all those who take strong drink on dark winter nights. See reference 4.

Back in the estate, a courtyard garden for one of the blocks of flats. Not clear how access is shared.

That evening, a return visit to the Fox at Bar Hill, first visited getting on for a couple of years ago and noticed at reference 5. Not changed much, but being evening, quite a few flashy young men with flashy cars, possibly from Essex, with young girls to match.

I took something close to veggie, a salad involving beans, cous-cous and stuff like that. Just a sprinkling of chicken. Slightly spoiled by a dollop of very vinegary red cabbage at the bottom of the bowl.

BH not too keen on the big roads and big junctions she had to negotiate to get back to our hotel. But to her credit, she made it. Even if she did muddle up the Premier Inn and the Travelodge just along the way.

There were lots of cars in the car park and the barmaid said that the bar had been busy. We wondered if the hotel did not function at weekends as a trysting place for the older couple, perhaps hooked up over the Internet.

While the following morning, at least two flashy motorbikes in the hotel car park. Perhaps there was a gathering of middle aged long-hairs somewhere in the vicinity.

While all the scooters came with a special holder for the hirer's mobile phone. Wouldn't want them to fall offline when on their travels, speeding along the roads and pavements of Cambridge. Plus cod village sign. No duck pond to go with it though.

PS: in the margins of checking up on the chicory, we came across Dr. Hessayon's floral version of the wheel of colour. A version which went, to my mind, rather beyond the colour printing capability of his printer. Never mind the several layers of image processing needed to get it here. A version of the yellow-magenta-blue half of the regular RGB colour wheel, for which see references 6 and 7. All a bit misleading to my mind, as you get flowers all round that colour wheel, even if there are not that many green ones. And then there is white to worry about. I wonder where he lifted his colour names from? Are the colours of flowers linked to the colour receptors in the eyes of the birds and insects which do the business for them?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/orchard-park.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicory.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/blackberries-2.html.

Reference 4: https://histonandimpingtonvillagesociety.wordpress.com/history/impington/elizabeth-woodcocks-adventure/.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/11/through-tunnel.html.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_wheel.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_colors.

Silversea

Since mentioning Silversea in July, or perhaps more to the point, clicking on one of their advertisements, I have been getting a steady stream of advertisements from them in my gmail inbox.

I clicked on one this evening to learn all about a shiny new cruise liner called 'Silva Nova'. The centrepiece of this advertisement was a video presented by the lady snapped above. A lady who appeared to spend a lot of money on her clothes and accessories and who did have a very thick accent. Not my type at all - although perhaps a fair sample of the sort of person one might find onboard. And to be fair, she would probably work better in real life than on my laptop.

So if you are going to flog me this global warming monster of a holiday, you are going to have to do better than this video. And that's leaving aside somehow convincing me that queueing every day for hours to get off this floating care home to get into to some motor boat which is to carry me off to some hidden gem, ready and waiting to relieve me of as much money as they can get hold of, is a good plan. Not to mention an unrelieved diet of hotel food for days on end with no prospect of escape. And never ending conversations about golf, heritage, houses and grandchildren. And a tacky Internet connection. It's all enough to drive one to drink or worse.

PS 1: I was moaning yesterday at reference 2 about the difficulty of getting at the save screen function on my new-to-me Zbook. By dint of trying various combinations of key combinations like 'WINDOWS + F13', I managed to push the snap above into the Screenshots folder. Next step is to find out which combination.

PS 2: this after a fine lunch in town, on which I shall report properly in due course.

PS 3: Wednesday morning: the secret services are still at it, offering me a place on their summer intelligence internship scheme. Let's hope they are better at running internship schemes than targeting advertisements. See reference 4 for an earlier notice.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/07/shipping-news.html. The mention.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/orchard-park.html.

Reference 3: https://www.silversea.com/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/not-almighty.html.

Orchard Park

Last week to Orchard Park in Cambridge. The roads were pretty clear and it took us about two hours to get to Birchanger services on the M11, as previously noticed at reference 1. A hot day, so it was nice to take a short break in cool of the service area.

There was a very small supply of newspapers in the large W H Smiths there, although, to be fair, they could manage a Guardian and a TLS. Sold to me by a cheerful young lady from somewhere in east central Europe. She even bothered to look up from her telephone to pass the time of day.

Not so nice to find that when we came to try to get out, a lorry had got stuck and was blocking the exit. No movement at all. After about half an hour some people appeared in hi-vis vests and things started to move again. We wondered where the impromptu traffic marshals came from: were they people working the service station who had volunteered against such a contingency? Rather as people volunteer to be fire marshals in large office blocks?

Eventually we made it to Orchard Park, picked out with the red dashed line on the snap above, sandwiched between the A14 above and Kings Hedges Road below. My first impression was a cut price version of King Charles' speculation at Poundbury in Dorset. A mixture of low rise flats and town houses, given a bit of variety in shape and various shades of pastel and grey. Mostly without front gardens and with small back gardens, but the roads were mostly tree-lined. Some green space. A large Travelodge and a rather smaller Premier Inn. There was said to be a shop although we did not come across it.

Not altogether sure who the estate is targeted at, but a quick peek at the Internet suggests that one would get a lot more house for £500,000 than you would in Epsom. This despite Cambridge being something of a boom town. This despite the estate being next door to various science parks and handy to excellent communications. We wondered if some of this last was down to the need to link Felixstowe docks a bit to the south east with the far north; an accident of location.

In the top property, note the car port, a feature of some of the houses here at Kiln Lane, as most recently noticed at reference 2. A feature I rather like the look of, although I have never had one. At least not since we had a share of an open shed in a yard at Hambledon in Hampshire, many years ago now. The home of cricket for those that care about such things.

Our room in the Travelodge was perfectly clean and decent, if a little small. The only thing that irritated me slightly was that little spaces usually contrived both sides of the bed head, handy for keeping keys, wallets and such like, along with one's bedside reading, was too small to serve more than one of those purposes. But the plumbing worked and we worked out how to work the taps - with the result, it being hot, that I had my first shower for a while. Not something that happens very often at all.

Perusal of gmaps revealed a public house not far away, The Ship of Northfield Avenue, the orange pin bottom right in the snap above. So, declining the dinner offer at the hotel, more or less a cut down menu from Wetherspoons, we headed off to the Ship.

But before we got to the hostelry, we passed a large building called 'King's Hedges Educational Federation', which seems to be a fancy name for a large infant-primary school, as described at reference 2. The local education authority appear to handle at least some of the admissions, so they have not cut themselves adrift completely. At least four head teachers I should think: infant head, primary head, executive head and chieftain head - the school being quite near Chieftain Way. A focus on heads which might amuse those with a naval background.

The Ship turned out to be a newish build, mostly single storey affair, catering mainly to the Kings Hedges Estate, that is to say the next one down from where we were staying. Quite busy, inside and out, to the point where the barmaid did not get very much down time in the two hours or so that we were there. Just the odd fag out back. Talking of which, there was a fair amount of smoking outside and a fair amount of rolling inside, more than you would get in an Epsom pub, even TB, these days.

There were beer engines, but I doubt if they were connected to beer. Very much a lager house. Maybe a touch rowdy late on Friday, this being early on Thursday, so quite safe for the elderly.

Substantial table tops, possibly joined to their undercarriages in later life.

Not wanting a full-on meal at this point, a perfectly adequate lasagne, even if I failed to get the right focus. BH did not do as well with her fried fish which was a little tired, probably rather like that I had had in the Eagle the previous week, as noticed towards the end of reference 4.

Now run by Wells & Co of Bedford. And as can be just about seen in the snap above, someone thought that it would be as well to erect at six foot panel fence between the garden and the sidewalk. Perhaps there were just too many cracks from passing youth.

On the way back to the hotel, another building with a rather grand name. And an internal telephone box. Perhaps it serves coffee to the inmates.

Quite a lot of space is given to dedicated bus lanes. It would hardly do in London.

Even in the best run estates.

I liked the detailing at the corner of the building in the middle of the snap above. It provided a bit of visual interest.

A tree lined street, hotel right. I passed on a nightcap, I passed on a second shower (which would have been unprecedented) and proceeded directly to Kindle and Vanity Fair. Where I learned a new-to-me use of the word 'creditable'. That is to say, a soldier at the time of the Battle of Waterloo to whom a Brussels shopkeeper or tavernkeeper might reasonably extend credit.

And a little bit further on a bit of what-ifery, a mode of thought last mentioned at reference 6. Here described by Thackery as: 'a most puzzling, amusing, ingenious, and profitable kind of meditation'. The what-if being, what if Napoleon had delayed his descent from Elba by a few months, waiting until his conquerors had stood their armies down and had got down to serious squabbling about the spoils. Then he might have walked it and reigned for the rest of his natural. Although what might have happened after that is a bit more speculative.

A book that wears its getting on for 200 years pretty well. It remains an interesting and entertaining read - and rather more sophisticated that the various screen adaptations would suggest. Illustrated by the author in the edition snapped above.

PS 1: failed to work out this afternoon how to do print screen on a Zbook in Windows 11, despite the right hand shift key having the additional label 'prt sc'. As so often happens, the advice turned up by the likes of Bing does not quite work. Maybe I will get there in the end. But a plus was learning something new about the way that the snipping tool works, storing an image in the Screenshots folder which I had not known about - and have so far failed to bottom out. 

PS 2: at 19:52 this Sunday evening, the Google servers seem to be struggling for once. Rare for them to exhibit noticeable delays in anything much.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/piano-76.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/08/trolley-584.html.

Reference 3: https://www.kingshedgesprimary.org.uk/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/premier-inn.html.

Reference 5: Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - 1848.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/swampman.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/fake-167.html. More on the hotel.

Bastides

Having done a Bastides for lunch today, the first since that noticed at reference 1, I thought to check what a bastide was - my theory being that it was a fortified town on a cliff overlooking the Dordogne valley, built during the troubled times of the Hundred Years War to keep marauding Brits in check.

Not quite the story according to Wikipedia at reference 3, which describes them as medieval new towns in south west France, seemingly more a device for colonising unused land, presumably not very good land, than anything else. Getting on for 700 of them altogether and one of them was a place called Aigues-Mortes, pre-existing but re-developed to give Louis IX of France crusading access to the Mediterranean, not dependant on the good will of either the Count of Toulouse or the King of Aragon.

The old town is about where it says 'Aigue-Mortes' in the snap above. With the name meaning - perhaps in the Langue d'oc - dead water, for all the shallow lakes and ponds of salt water which then surrounded the town. Access to the sea seemingly provided by some kind of dyke or canal. A small portion of the town walls is also snapped above, suggesting that the King of France was a very rich man.

Back with sausage, the reason for a Bastides today was that I declined the other half of the sauce in a bottle from Tesco, noticed at reference 2, with the result that I was invited to put the apron on. As it happens, the last Bastides, noticed at reference 1, also involved sauce in a bottle, Sainsbury's rather than Tesco's and rather more successful. Note that I failed to find an image of a cut Bastides saucisson sec, so I had to do with this image of a sausage made in the USA, lifted from reference 5. But it looks about right. Down to the rather sticky coating of flour on the outside, on top of the casing.

One large and one small of garlic, gently fried in a little butter. Add four mid-sized onions, finely chopped. Cook for a bit. Add an orange pepper, coarsely chopped. Cook for a bit more. Add five mid-sized tomatoes, finely chopped. Cook gently for getting on for an hour. I added a couple of tablespoons of water at some point.

Add three or four sticks of celery, cross sliced, about twenty minutes before the off. Add 200g of Bastides (plain, no truffles or any of that sort of nonsense), coarsely sliced and quartered. Add some left over boiled whites, chopped into chunks of about one cubic inch. Simmer for the last ten minutes.

Serve with boiled brown rice and green salad. Round off proceedings with a couple of baked apples from next door.

Enough stew left for a snack at some point tomorrow.

Note absence of salt and pepper. Quite enough of that in the sausage.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/07/bottle-cooking.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/sausage-sans-pork.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastide.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aigues-Mortes.

Reference 5: https://frenchalacarteblog.com/2016/09/23/saucisson-made-in-usa/.